Crypto-currency pushers point to ecstatic highs, while usually not mentioning possibly abysmal downsides and risk of total obliteration. One pusher recently compared Bitcoin to gold: "... earn your gold by mining it – which is also what you do to get bitcoin, but with computers instead of picks and shovels – or you can pay cash for it."
However, there are differences between gold & crypto-currencies rarely, if at all, mentioned. Understandable for those pushing cryptos to the high side. While the majority of people understand gold's value, few understand crypto-currencies, or the blockchain. Thus many are skeptical, but have difficulty refuting pushers' euphoric claims.
Downsides of Cryptos:
Gold and cash don't require an up-&-running internet system or electric-power supply, which are vulnerable to going down due to solar-flare activity, war, system breakdown, sabotage or other reason. Dependence on technology is at least as treacherous as IT is beneficial. Survival on this planet requires tangible food, shelter, knowhow & possibly exchangeable assets. Humans have lived reasonably well without electricity & internet for millenia. How are electricity & internet going to save humans if/when crops fail causing food shortages and war destroys infrastructure, dwellings etc. IF electric power & internet systems still function they aint gonna be much good without food, shelter & basic survival skills. Only perhaps as tools to search for food & shelter! Gold, silver, tools & weapons are likely to be more readily exchangeable than crypto-currency computer code!
I have problems remembering & keeping records of codes, passwords & secret keys needed to access online accounts. I've been in difficult shituations because of lost, mislaid or stolen passwords, or because I could not access my accounts. Systems go down! I signed up with Steem awhile ago - got a very long code which I wrote down by hand - I have access to my account on the Steem app on my device, but I can't access the monetary functions for transactions because the code I wrote down does not work! Maybe my error? I dunno! But that puts me right off sinking exchangeable assets into crypto-codes & "coins" that require code-keys. Online hacking is another risk.
Sure, money in banks these days is unbacked fiat, mostly electronic digits akin to cryptos but centrally controlled by banks & governments. At least if we lose our keys or codes we can go to the bank with ID to recover accounts, as i've done. With Steem & other cryptos there's no such recourse! How many Bitcoins have been LOST, rather than hacked & stolen, since inception? IF only 22(?) million Bitcoins can ever be mined, what proportion are LOST FOREVER? Where do LOST Bitcoins go? - Crypto Hell? I'm sure God does not accept Bitcoins in payment for passage to heaven!
The dark beginnings of Bitcoin, possibly with a fictional character called Satoshi Nakamoto (Japanese name meaning: village-city inside-origin) smells of a CIA-type inside-job project. As with tech-gizmo devices, which probably all have inbuilt backdoors to their central processors, who can be sure that blockchain tech dunna have backdoors? Anyway, governments or companies can take down internet & power supplies to render cryptos & all digital electronic systems defunct! Is the world now set up for a massive take-down?
I see crypto-mania as somewhat similar to "The South Seas Bubble", "Tulip Mania" & the first railroads boom. Some railroads prospered, many collapsed. Crypto-currencies & "coins" are getting snapped up these crypto-crazy boom-days with QEeer money insanely produced like confetti by central banks to keep the party going. The plethora of cryptos OUT THERE compete & dilute or erode Bitcoin and each other in a feasting frenzy of circling vultures or sharks! Some people are trying to escape the flood of QEeer money insanity into the fire of electronic cryptos. Governments look likely to eventually issue their own blockchain ledgers for citizens, with access by gov officials too! Such gov-crypto systems, as Modi in India seems interested in using to get Indians into a gov-controlled system, are likely to railroad through and render the likes of Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc., obsolete... unless governments use Bitcoin, as perhaps Vanuatu is doing, or use other such ubiquitously-available-online cryptos. But that would require governments, or central banks, to willingly give up control of money supply. That aint likely without financial collapse coming first, as in Zimbabwe, Venezuela, etc.
Cryptos are a disruption that calls for us to examine what money is. Then we'll be in a better position to judge whether cryptos are a good or better form of money or not. Money is tokens, symbols or IOU debt promises used to facilitate exchange of goods & services. Through millenia varying forms of money have been used. Gold is one form with intrinsic value for its rarity. But the beginnings of "money" must have arisen in small communities of people who knew each other & kept "mental ledgers" of services, deeds, work & goods provided with expectations of receiving something in return as a fair, acceptable exchange. So "money" is essentially a mental account of exchange, trade, or barter. Physical tokens must have appeared later to represent mental accounts that are still to be settled. Gold, other precious metals & stones with intrinsic value are often acceptable as direct payment in exchange for goods & services. They aren't seen merely as tokens of debt owed, but as of value in & of themselves. Most coins, tokens, paper promises & certainly electronic codes or digits have little, or no, intrinsic value! They're symbolic: only accepted by others partaking in the same symbol system, like $, ¥, £, €... all fiat token promises doomed to eventual debasement & extinction. Crypto-currencies encrypt the electronic energy mined, or worked, into them! A book, or script, is a kind of cryptic code or story that others may appreciate, value & be willing to exchange for some other thing of value. But Bitcoin? ITs code is so cryptic that few understand IT! Methinks IT may be a scam... ITs certainly a very hard-to-understand, cryptic story! But some are convinced IT has value, rather than merely being a means of transfering tokens representing value. Perhaps i'm the fool for not getting IT!
Blockchain tech? Yep, I can see it may facilitate distributed-ledger account exchange. But there's no intrinsic value in IT, except the electric power worked/mined into ITs code. That's only gonna work as long as there's electric power, functioning internet system & people accepting & exchanging Bitcoin or other crypto-tokens! I have doubts about how many people will accept & use blockchain tech & cryptos, unless governments push or force their own versions. Blockchain tech brings us back to "mental ledgers" kept personally by communities since long ago. Now our mental accounts have become more complex and displaced from mind to computer systems, with blockchain ledgers encrypted in electronic, digital code. I don't trust electronic ledgers to keep accounts, with the ever-present danger of losing access codes to electronic systems they're encrypted on. My mind is the final place where my accounts are settled, closed or kept open, NOT electronic systems. I aint a machine! And I aint planning on having electronic circuits, chips or tech implanted in my body. Crypto-currencies may well lead that way. And who knows whether individuals will be free of government or corporate scanning of personal cryptic codes?
CONCLUSION: Blockchain tech & cryptos may facilitate electronic distribution of accounts & exchange value, somewhat as railroads, cargo ships & airfreight facilitate distribution of goods. All such distribution services have sucesses & failures, booms & busts. Bitcoin may be a CIA scam or Ponzi scheme, as many cryptos OUT THERE obviously are! Gambling aint a profession I value! Although I see there are early "winners" in the crypto stakes, i prefer to keep my own mental accounts of "things" and not become too dependent on machine systems. However, I acknowledge there are blockheads OUT THERE willing to throw their lot into chains, nets, links & prison-systems. Whether Bitcoin code is a death sentence dreamed up by a cryptic mind, I can't judge. But I know IT dunna hold real treasure buried in our lifetimes here below in the world of finite "things" fallen from the Infinite. No code, or mathematics, can encrypt Life's real treasure.
A FINAL story that seems to favour crypto-currencies over gold: Met a man on the Titanic who insisted on taking his gold with him when the ship was sinking. His gold sank him! IF he had crypto-currency perhaps he could have walked on water? But when the Titanic represents the whole world as we know IT going down, then how are cryptos gonna save us? Will there be functioning electronic systems & others who know what crypto-man is talking about when he asks to exchange encypted codes for bread & wine?
Melchizedek would tell crypto-man his codes are gibberish nonsense akin to what transpired in the human construction of the Tower of Babel. He'd send him to work in Solomon's gold mines. We do not live by bread alone, and certainly not by encrypted electronic codes. The Book of Life has covers & code-forms that can be opened by the living with nothing more than Life. Crypto-currencies may just be the latest screwed-up script of Satan to tie human minds up in blocks, chains, links, nets & fetters of their own infernal imaginations & inventions.
Take care down in The Crypt. Dead bodies are encrypted there.